10/29/2014

I haven't posted anything for a long time because of multiple projects that have piled up. Now that a cold is making me stop for a day or two it's time to try to return to a more regular updates.

Unable to think/edit I reached for an unfinished book. "Images" by Ingmar Bergman. (I swam in Bergman earlier in the year conducting a semester long seminar on his films.)

Two thoughts jump up: in a brilliant and short introduction to the book Woody Allen offers a handful of great remarks about Bergman and yet ends up with "me, me, me". Is he unable to stick to giving respect to his master? Is this a sign of Allen's limits?

Then Bergman himself on the very first page drops a bomb. Recalling a failed (in his opinion) interview/book called "Bergman on Bergman" he comments on his insincerity in giving answers to the journalists involved. He writes the following, devastating sentence:

"I plead for an understanding that, in any case is impossible".

If a mind of such a caliber writes something like that, the earth shatters exposing the limits of the possibility of our knowledge of each other.

I am particularly sensitive to the issue of limits because I am struggling with a difficult creative process which pushes in my face my own limits as a storyteller. I am also witnessing a farcical bickering among a group of people who, of all the people, should know how to transcend their "inter-subjective" limits. I am borrowing this term from the Siemek film project - this is the project I am struggling with.

Hopefully I won't write more about the bickering group. Instead I would soon like to post more about the way the Marek Siemek documentary evolves despite, or because of the limits of its filmmaker.

One thing however is certain: Bergman's bleak outlook at the inability to understand applies to a documentary as well. A documentary that attempts to bring understanding to its subject is kidding itself.

No understanding is possibly. Only subjective, (inter-subjective?) approximation from a very specific, singular point of view. And such an approximation will always remain limited.

About me

I am interested in the lofty and in the mundane, in the metaphysical and in the hilarious too. My film work has recently dealt with bridging the fictitious and the documentary as well as with seeking connections between the abstract and the visual.
The projects are described at www.directing.com